When I wake up early Saturday morning, my head is resting on Ben’s lap. He is slouched down in one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs, still asleep, his head tipped back. I shift away from him as quietly as I can, and make my way across the room to Bree, who is sitting with a paper cup of hot chocolate and a worn magazine from one of the tables.

“Hey,” I say, my voice more hoarse than I’d expected. “How is he?”

Bree flips the magazine shut. “Still unconscious, but they say he’s stable now. And the doctors have splinted his fingers, wrapped his chest, put his leg in a cast, everything. Now we just have to wait for him to wake up.”

“But he will, right? He’ll wake up?” I ask. Slowly, she nods.

“I think so, yeah. Mom and Bill are in his room, if you want to talk to them,” she says.

I shake my head and back away. “No, I have some calls I need to make. If Ben wakes up, tell him I went outside, alright?”

I stop by the hot chocolate machine and grab a tiny cup of it on my way outside. There’s a worn mahogany bench outside the building, and I drop down onto it, tugging out both of the cell phones in my pocket. First, I turn on my own and send a mass text message to everyone I think will care. Alex, Jeremy, Mason, Corey. Garen’s in the hospital. He was attacked. Broken bones, still unconscious, but he’s alive. Will call later with the details. Thought you should know. They’ll all reply as soon as they read the message, asking who did it, how badly he’s hurt, when they can see him. I can’t handle that bullshit right now, so I power off my phone and put it away once more.

Taking a deep breath, I click the center button to light up the screen of Garen’s Blackberry. There’s one new text from James, a brief line. Seriously, G, call me. I press the send button and raise the phone to my ear. It only rings for a second before he picks up.

“Mornin’,” says the sleepy Georgia drawl on the other end. “You’re up earlier than usual. And now, thanks to your dumb, hot ass, so am I. What happened last night? I texted you about ten times, and you—”

“James, this is Travis,” I interrupt. A brief pause.

“Travis? Why are you calling me from Garen’s phone?”

“I think you should pack a bag and get on a train to Lakewood. Garen’s in the hospital,” I say. “He was beaten up last night. He’s got some broken bones, and he’s still unconscious right now, but the doctor tells us he’s going to be fine. But I think you should come see him. You can stay with us.”

“H-How? Who did this?” James demands.

“The police are looking into it. But… I was the last person who saw him before he got beat up. He was with his boyfriend.”

“I keep hearing about this boyfriend!” James practically snarls. In the background, I can hear the chatter of what seems to be fingers on a keyboard. “Who the fuck is he? G said you were yelling at him yesterday. Why? Garen doesn’t do boyfriends, he’s only ever dated two guys, he wouldn’t—”

“Dave,” I say quietly. “He got back together with Dave.”

The silence on the other end is enough to make me almost physically ill. Eventually, however, the clacking of hands on keys resumes. “There’s a train out of Grand Central at seven o’clock, and I fully intend to be on it. Google’s telling me there’s only one hospital in Lakewood, so I assume he’s at Lakewood General, which I have the address to now. I’ll take a cab from New Haven. If there’s some kind of list I need to be on in order to see him, get me on it. Tell them I’m a cousin or something. I don’t care. Just make it happen, alright?”

“Okay,” I say, but the phone has already gone dead.

When I return to the waiting room, Bree is sitting between Bill and Mom. None of them notice me entering, and Ben is still asleep, so I slip through the double doors and into Garen’s room. I have already shut the door behind myself before I realize there’s already someone sitting next to his bed.

“Sorry. I didn’t realize someone was in here,” I say quickly. The woman in the chair turns her pale face sharply towards me, her dark green eyes flitting up and down over me, almost as if she’s sizing me up.

“It’s alright,” she says finally. “Have a seat.”

I don’t want to, but the way she says it doesn’t seem to give me much of a choice, so I sink down onto the chair on the opposite side of the bed. Garen’s smashed-up face is like a magnet, drawing my eyes towards him; he still looks almost dead. I reach for his hand, but find that his fingers are all in splints. My own hand falls limply onto the bed between us.

“So,” says the woman after a too-long pause, “you must be Travis.”

Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t know that I used to fuck my stepbrother? It’s seriously starting to seem like there was a nationwide bulletin or something. Biting back this retort, I turn my attention back to the woman. Her dark brown hair is immaculately styled into thick curls that end just past her shoulders, and she is wearing a tailored black suit, though the jacket is thrown across the foot of the bed. Something about her is extremely familiar, but I am positive I’ve never spoken to her before in my life.

“Yes,” I say as politely as I can manage. “Who are you?”

A wry smile twists across her lips. “I suppose we can give up the pretense of formality, and you can just call me Marian. After all, I’m just a few years and a constitutional amendment away from being your mother-in-law, the way my son tells it.”

Oh holy shit.

“You’re uh… you’re Garen’s mom?” I say hoarsely. Shenods once.

“That I am. And I believe this is yours.” I watch as she digs into the pocket of her jacket and pulls out a small silver object, which I barely catch as she tosses it to me. It’s my class ring, split right down one of the sides, as if it was snipped off with a pair of bolt-cutters. On one side of the stone in the middle, the letters LHS glint up at me. I turn the ring slightly and blink down at my own initials, TDM.

“It’s broken,” I say.

“They needed to cut it off his hand so that they could splint his fingers,” Marian says calmly. “I assumed those were your initials. Granted, I was only certain about the T and the M, but I couldn’t think of anyone else. May I ask why Garen was wearing your ring?”

“I gave it to him… I don’t really remember when. Sometime in November, I guess. Back when uh… before he left.”She doesn’t say anything, so I find myself sighing and leaning forward. “Look, Ms. Weisman—”

“Marian.”

“Marian. Look. Can you just tell me how much Garen told you about what happened between me and him? Because I can’t really say anything, if you don’t already know,” I say.

She reclines in her seat, her elbows resting on the arms of her chair and her fingers steepled together. “After that moron of an ex-husband of mine kicked him out, Garen called me. He confessed that he had been secretly dating William’s fiance’s son for several months, and that everyone had just found out about it. I told him to drive to New York City, where I live. He did so, and he stayed in my apartment overnight.”

“I thought he went right back to Patton,” I say. Marian shakes her head.

“He told me the next day that he wanted to go back to Patton so that he could spend time with James, and I agreed. While he was with me, he told me quite a bit about you, actually.”

“Like what?” I ask warily.

“He said that you either didn’t realize you were gay or weren’t out of the closet when he met you. Halfway through November, the two of you began dating. Just before William and your mother announced their engagement, unless I’m much mistaken. He also told me that he ended things with you when William kicked him out of the house. But that wasn’t what really troubled me.”

I frown. What the hell kind of person would find something more troubling than the idea of her son boning a stepsibling? “What do you mean?”

“My son is in love with you, Travis McCall, and he seems to be quite close to losing his mind, for not being with you. Naturally, this makes me want to murder you with my bare hands. Last time we spoke, Garen told me that you were seeing someone new, one of his friends from this shitthole town. Someone named Ben, who I guess is the boy in the waiting room. Does this Ben kid make you happier than my son did?”

I clear my throat and try to answer honestly, “He makes me happy in a different way. For different reasons.”

“Travis, dear? I’m a lawyer. Please don’t try to bullshit your way through a conversation, because I can promise you that I’m far better at it than you are,” she says. When I open my mouth to speak, she cuts me off. “I don’t doubt that you care about Ben. I don’t doubt that he makes you happy. But there are some things I really have to wonder about. For instance, if you fell apart the same way Garen did, once things ended between you two. And if losing Ben would hurt you as much as losing Garen did.”

“I did fall apart. That’s part of why I’m not going to get back together with Garen. Because I can’t be with someone who would ever want to hurt me like that. But really, I don’t get it,” I say. “Are you seriously trying to tell me that you think I should dump my boyfriend for your kid, even though he’s my stepbrother?”

Marian begins to inspect her nails. “William’s pretty much a moron, but he already chose his new wife over his son once. I don’t think he’ll make the same mistake twice. Besides, from what Garen tells me, your mother has the tendency to be quite the little troll. No offense, of course.”

“None taken. It’s pretty much true.”

“Mm. What I’m trying to say is, just because your mother is married to his father, doesn’t mean things will always be that way. You might not be stepbrothers forever. Regardless, I think you might have been good for Garen. For the first time in years, I wasn’t getting weekly phone calls about booze, drugs, fighting, sex, and the possibility of being expelled. And at the very least, you’re better for him than whoever did this to him now.”

I shrug. “I get it. Really, I do. But I have a boyfriend, and despite what you may think, I actually do want to be with him.”

Marian shrugs back. “It’s your choice, Travis. I just wanted to make sure you know that I… well, I’m not quite sure I approve, per se. But if, at some point, you did decide you wanted to be with my son again, I would be hard-pressed to come up with a reason why it would be a bad idea.” She gives another sardonic smile, suddenly looking very much like her son. “Besides, anything that makes William’s life harder is bound to make me happy.” I barely have time to return her smile before she clears her throat, suddenly cold. “Now. Tell me how he got this way.”

I launch into the story once more, telling her everything I know about Dave, what happened at Patton, how Garen changed after he came back to Lakewood, the things I said tonight, how I found Garen. Marian’s eyes darken more with every word I say. By the time I get to the part about being interrogated by the police, she is trembling slightly.

“Yes, one of the women from the police department came by earlier. Detective Phillips, I think she said her name was. She told me they were working on finding Dave, that he was one of their primary suspects,” she says.

I snort. “Primary suspects? He’s the only suspect.”

“Actually, Detective Phillips warned me that they were looking into someone else. Someone who they believe is as likely a suspect as Dave,” she replied.

“Who?” I demand. She simply looks at me, and after a moment, my skin seems to ice over. “Me? They think I did this to Garen?”

“Phillips told me that, given your past relationship with Garen, and the current, tumultuousstate of things, you were almost as much of a candidate as Dave is. You don’t look like you’ve been in a fight, and you have an alibi, but they plan to quesstion you some more. I’ve also been told that you have a history of mental problems. You’re currently on medication, you’ve been in therapy for over a year.”

“My doctor took me off medication a while ago,” I hastily correct.

“I also hear that you were briefly institutionalized. Thirty days in a psychiatric hospital.”

I stare at her, stunned. How does she know about that?Of all the skeletons I’ve hidden in my closet over the years, this is the biggest. This is the one thing that is never spoken of, never mentioned, not even in the privacy of our own home. No one knows about that, except for my parents, my sister, and Corey, who really only found out because he demanded to know why I missed almost a month of school. My grandparents have no idea, my cousins have no idea, my aunts, uncles, everybody. Ben still doesn’t know about that, even after the hours we’ve spent together, telling each other every single dirty secret. Fuck, I never even told Garen. How can his mom know about it?

“It’s not what you think,” I say slowly. “It wasn’t because I was crazy. Not really, alright? My mom… she just didn’t know how to react after I, you know. After I tried to kill myself. She was still having a hard time with things after the divorce, and I guess I was just… another unnecessary burden. She couldn’t afford to be watching over me all the time, making sure I was doing okay, so she put me in a hospital for most of November, and a little of December. They kept everyone there under surveillance, had us go through a lot of really intensive therapy, all that bullshit you’d expect. After thirty days, she was, I don’t know, more prepared to deal with me, so she pulled me out of it and had me start weekly therapy sessions with Dr. Baker, the psychiatrist that the hospital recommended for me. Look, Marian, I was suicidal, not homicidal. I don’t hurt people. Especially people I care about.”

In a way, it’s almost cathartic, to finally talk about this, after all this time. Mostly, though, it’s just fucking terrifying. Marian hasn’t blinked once the entire time I’ve spoken. Finally, she reaches out and takes Garen’s limp hand, turning his arm gently until his wrist is bared.

“I noticed this earlier,” she says, running a fingertip over the ‘T’ tattooed across his wrist. “I guess it’s fairly new. Since he met you, at any rate. He certainly never told me he was getting it, probably because he knew I wouldn’t have allowed it. I despise tattoos. I’m not quite sure how much Garen’s told you about our family, but my father was imprisoned in Dachau, during the Second World War. He didn’t have an ID number tattooed on him – only the prisoners from Auschwitz did – but even now, I can’t see any tattoo without thinking about the camps, and what my father must have been through. Garen was never that fond of tattoos either, for various reasons. I think in a way, it was out of respect for his grandfather, but for the most part, he just used to say that he couldn’t imagine ever giving a shit about something long enough for it to make sense to get it permanently inked into his skin. Music, maybe. He said that if he ever got a tattoo, it would have to do with music, because that’s all he cared about. But here he is. ‘T.’ Doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out that it’s for you.”

“I’m sorry,” I think I say, but my mind is racing too much to be sure. I should know these things, Garen and I should’ve talked about these things. God, why didn’t we ever have a conversation about anything important when we had the chance?

“Don’t be. My point is, Travis, that I believe my son cared about you more than anything. More than the proclamations he used to make about what he’d never do. More than music, I suppose. I don’t think he would have gotten this done if he didn’t feel that way. And though my son has his flaws, he has a good heart, and a good mind, and I am sure he would only ever fall in love with someone who deserved him. I choose to believe you are too good of a man to ever hurt my child this way,” she says.

Wordlessly, I push up my left sleeve and extend my arm so that she can see the small black ‘G’ tattooed onto my own wrist. She blinks at it for a moment, but I still don’t speak. The tattoo says so much more than I ever could. Just then, I hear muffled shouting from the waiting room. Marian seems completely unwilling to leave Garen’s side, so I trudge back out into the waiting room to see what’s happening.

James Goldwyn is standing in the middle of the room, looking prepared to bring down unholy hellfire on anyone who plans to prevent him from seeing Garen. This, of course, includes my mom.

“Only family members are allowed in at this time,” she says, stone-faced.

James snorts. “I’m a hell of a lot closer to being family than you are.”

I duck back around my mom. As the door swings shut behind me, I hear James mutter something, to which my mom retorts, “Travis is Garen’s brother.”

I open Garen’s door again, just wide enough to poke my head inside. Marian is exactly as I left her, staring wide-eyed at Garen’s body. I clear my throat. “James just got here, and my mom refuses to let him in to see Garen. Could you—”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she mutters, storming from the room on the loudest pair of heels I’ve ever heard. I trail after her, arriving in time to hear her say, “Jamie, get your scrawny ass into that room right now.”

James bolts for the door, pausing in front of me only to say, “Thank you for calling me,” and kiss me, catching half my mouth.

Mom is practically shaking with fury. “You have no right to—”

“Shut up, Evelyn, I’ve got every right. He’s my son, not yours, and James has been his best friend for years. William would’ve let him in, too.”

“I am part of Garen’s family, whether you like it or not,” Mom snaps.

“Is that what you tell yourself?” Marian sneers. “You hate my son. Everyone can see that. I’m not sure why, honestly. Maybe you hate seeing a reminder that William had a life long before you, and he’ll have one long after he’s wised up and divorced you. Maybe it bothers you that Garen finally got your obviously, flamingly gay son to come out of the closet. Or maybe you’re just a control freak who can’t handle the idea of something beyond her circle of influence. I don’t know what it is, Ev, and I don’t exactly care. Whatever it is, I’m sick of it. So, from now on, leave all Garen-related decisions to me or William. Clear?”

This is one of the best moments of my life. Garen’s mom is my hero. She turns on her heel and heads for the hospital cafeteria, muttering something about needing a cup of coffee. Rather than face the wrath of my mom, I dart back into Garen’s room. James is slumped in Marian’s vacated chair, his face blank and paler than I’ve ever seen it.

“He’s going to be okay,” I say quietly, and James jumps.

“Of course. I just… didn’t expect him to look this bad. This is even worse than he looked last time this happened,” he says. I fill him in on Garen’s assorted injuries, answer all the questions I can. Eventually, there is nothing else we can do but lapse into silence. We sit there for the better part of an hour, but that’s all I can take; James keeps dozing and forcing himself awake every few seconds. He clearly didn’t sleep on the train ride down, and this is just getting ridiculous.

“Do you want to go back to my house and sleep? I can give you my house key.” God, I hope they took the blood-soaked sheets as evidence.

James shakes his head. “I called a hotel nearby and made a reservation. Someplace called the Pettigrew? I’ve already stopped by and dropped off my duffel.”

“You should go sleep. I can call you if… he wakes up,” I say. It’s so hard to stop myself from imagining the other end of the spectrum, having to call and tell him that Garen is dead. It takes several more minutes of coaxing, but eventually, I get him to agree. He pauses to text his room number to Garen’s phone, still in my pocket, just in case anyone needs him.

More people start to come after that, meaning I guess Mom has relaxed her “only family members allowed” rule. When Ben wakes up, he comes to sit with me for a while, but half an hour later, he reluctantly admits that he has to leave for work. I hate to see him go; being without him makes me feel so much more alone. After he disappears, Alex stops by for an update. I explain everything to him, including the conversation with Garen’s mom.

“It’s a lot to think about,” he says, once I’ve finished.

“Yeah,” I agree, though I can’t help but think that part of him must expect something else from me. What, though? ‘She’s absolutely right, of course I should be with Garen, how ‘bout you take Ben off my hands’? Alex seems prepared to stick around for a while, but I find myself just… wanting to be alone with Garen again. I glance around the room, trying to find something I can say that might persuade him to leave. Finally, I realize that a jacket is draped across the back of the chair he’s sitting in. “Could you do me a favor?”

“Anything,” he says quickly, and I feel a little guilty for wanting him to be gone. Not guilty enough to stop wanting it, though.

“James left his jacket here when he stopped by earlier. Could you bring it to him? He’s staying at the Pettigrew Hotel, room six-thirteen,” I say.

“Of course,” Alex says, standing and flinging the jacket over his shoulder. “Listen… I know things have been weird between you and I lately. Especially considering how I acted at prom. So… I just wanted to say I’m sorry. And I’m trying.”

“Trying?” I echo.

He looks like he’s going to be sick. “I’m trying to back off him.”

It’s the closest I’m every going to get to a confession of his feelings for my boyfriend, and it’s more than I want. But I smile and say blandly, “I know. It’s cool, man. Don’t worry about it.”

Still, I’m glad when he leaves. Marian returns for another hour or two after that, but she ends up leaving for the main lobby around noon, telling me that she needs to make some calls to relatives. ‘Just in case’ is how she says it. I try not to let myself hear her.

At one o’clock, I retreat to the lobby for a cup of hot chocolate, and return fifteen minutes later to discover there’s been no change.

At two o’clock, there’s still no change.

At three o’clock, there’s still no change.

At four o’clock, there’s still no change.

At four sixteen exactly, Garen makes a small noise, halfway between a groan and a gasp. I lurch forward in my seat and say, “Garen?”

“Shut up,” he croaks. “Where am I?”

I want to grab him, shake him by the shoulders, squeeze him until he cracks another few ribs. I settle for gently placing my hand over his unbandaged fingers. “The hospital. Lakewood Gen.”

“Fuuuuuuck,” he says, drawing out the word into half a dozen syllables. “Did I get hit by a fucking car? I feel like shit.”

“Actually, Dave attacked you and almost beat you to death,” I say flatly.

“What happened?” I demand. “You were fine whenI left, and then when I got home… I thought you were dead.”

“Pretty short story. You left, I went upstairs. Dave and I argued. It became a fistfight. I lost. I guess I passed out, after? I don’t know. The end.” He shifts, then winces. “Has he come to see me?”

Unbelievable. Unfuckingbelievable. I clear my throat. “If he had, I would’ve killed him. If I ever see him again, I will kill him.If you keep dating him, I will kill him. If you don’t make a complete recovery within two months, I will kill him. Are we clear?”

He seems to want to fight me on that, if only out of pain-in-the-ass instinct, but his injuries must hurt more than he had expected they would. “Crystal. He was beginning to bore me, anyway,” he says with a shrug that seems to cause him agony. “Jesus. He really bruised me, didn’t he?”

“More like wrecked you. Three broken fingers, two fractured ribs, broken tibia. The doctor told us you have to stay in a wheelchair for a month, until your ribs heal. After that, you can switch to crutches for the remaining few weeks it’ll leg for your leg to be fine. He also says you might need to go to physical therapy to retrain your fingers, if you ever want to play guitar like you used to.”

Garen is quiet for several minutes. I begin to wonder if he has passed out again, but just when I consider going for help, he raises his unbroken hand and drags his fingers through his hair. That’s all he seems able to do until finally, he says in a hoarse voice, “I was afraid it was going to be like that. I mean, afraid. When… when he had me on the floor? He’d already gotten dressed by then, and I dunno, I guess it’s a Pattonboy thing. We all keep wearing our combat boots, even when we stop going there. You have no idea how much it hurts to get kicked in the chest by somebody wearing combat boots. I swear, Travis, I could feel the crunch of my ribs breaking. It was excruciating. I think I’m only conscious now because this handy IV seems to be loading me up with painkillers. A-And then, my leg? That was uh… that was when I was on the ground, too. I collapsed, I just couldn’t stand anymore, not with how much he was punching me. I hit the ground near my desk… with my legs still out. When he kicked my shin, my leg got caught on desk, but he just snapped it. The way a fucking ninja snaps a board that’s braced on two cinderblocks, right through the middle. I was almost unconscious by the time he stomped on my hand, you know. That’s why broke my fingers, I guess. And really? I’m not lying to you when I say that I didn’t care. The ribs, the leg, the fucking trainwreck I know my face must be. None of that fazed me. But when he broke my fingers… all I could think was, ‘There goes my guitar. There goes the music. There goes the only thing that’s keeping me alive anymore.’ So, here I am. And now I have nothing.”

“You’ll be able to play again, Garen,” I say. My voice sounds thicker than usual, and I wonder vaguely if I’m crying. Not like it matters, considering he is, too. “I promise everything will be fine. Just trust me on that.”

He nods dazedly, still not looking at me. “Okay.”

I stand up. “I’m going to go find a doctor, let him know you’re awake. I guess I’ll round up everybody. Bree and Bill are both here, obviously. Your mom’s down in the lobby. And James is at his hotel, but he made me promise to call if your condition changed.”

“Wait!” Garen calls when I’m halfway to the door.

I turn back to look at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” he whispers. “Everything is wrong, Travis, so please just… sit with me. Just for a little while. I promise you can go get everyone soon, but for now, just please stay here with me. Don’t leave me again.”

Everything inside of me is battling for what to say. He needs a doctor. He needs his parents. He needs his best friend. But still, I find myself sinking down onto the chair next to him and taking his hand. “Of course. I’ll stay here for as long as you need me.”